What counts as smart?
in Philosophy ·
I suspect you might be overestimating what human beings are actually capable of. To my mind, anyone who talks about knowledge or mental "intensity" as if it were some quantifiable amount of data stored within a person is actually insulting the very definition of cognition—which, for some, is an ideal to be worshiped, a deep longing to touch the raw, purest truths of existence...
What we claim to know is, in reality, just a different way of encountering our own ignorance. We use our supposed "knowledge" merely to map out the boundaries of what we don't understand, and frankly, we aren't particularly wise if we walk around with the absolute certainty that we actually grasp things. Every single step forward we take simply uncovers a thousand new dimensions of possibility and doubt....
A genius or a truly brilliant person isn't someone who just collects the thoughts of others; they are the individual who discovers and validates something entirely new, provided it remains logical and coherent. If you want to create something truly significant, you have to build your foundation in a different place using entirely different methods, because simply renovating the old doesn't modernize the past, nor does it move the world forward....
If we hadn't spent history tearing down sacred foundations and exposing so many delusions, we’d likely still be stuck in the Middle Ages or the Stone Age....
I honestly don't understand why some people, when they look up at the night sky and realize how tiny and invisible our planet is in the vastness of outer space—a place so infinite that our entire existence feels like a single grain of sand on a beach—find it so difficult to admit that everything they think they know, and everything they strive to learn, is essentially meaningless and trivial....
If I perceived the world through a different, perhaps more serious lens—one similar to yours—I would agree with you completely. But it seems to me, if you'll excuse the bluntness, that your thoughts are a bit too beholden to those logical-mathematical structures that people cling to when they are terrified of the uncertainty and instability found in the (un)known; they spend their intellect and sharp wit practicing a strictly human logic that insists on placing man at the center of the universe....
I find that approach fundamentally flawed, though I can't really complain about your perspective. Regardless, I respect it....
What we claim to know is, in reality, just a different way of encountering our own ignorance. We use our supposed "knowledge" merely to map out the boundaries of what we don't understand, and frankly, we aren't particularly wise if we walk around with the absolute certainty that we actually grasp things. Every single step forward we take simply uncovers a thousand new dimensions of possibility and doubt....
A genius or a truly brilliant person isn't someone who just collects the thoughts of others; they are the individual who discovers and validates something entirely new, provided it remains logical and coherent. If you want to create something truly significant, you have to build your foundation in a different place using entirely different methods, because simply renovating the old doesn't modernize the past, nor does it move the world forward....
If we hadn't spent history tearing down sacred foundations and exposing so many delusions, we’d likely still be stuck in the Middle Ages or the Stone Age....
I honestly don't understand why some people, when they look up at the night sky and realize how tiny and invisible our planet is in the vastness of outer space—a place so infinite that our entire existence feels like a single grain of sand on a beach—find it so difficult to admit that everything they think they know, and everything they strive to learn, is essentially meaningless and trivial....
If I perceived the world through a different, perhaps more serious lens—one similar to yours—I would agree with you completely. But it seems to me, if you'll excuse the bluntness, that your thoughts are a bit too beholden to those logical-mathematical structures that people cling to when they are terrified of the uncertainty and instability found in the (un)known; they spend their intellect and sharp wit practicing a strictly human logic that insists on placing man at the center of the universe....
I find that approach fundamentally flawed, though I can't really complain about your perspective. Regardless, I respect it....